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Cloud-based Backup: The Right Choice for Texas Non-profit

chalcon
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Employee

This post was written by Mayank Sharma, Network Systems Engineer at Child Advocates and a Symantec Customer

A very important consideration for any SMB is an effective data protection solution for smooth running of operations. We’re generating more data in every aspect of life, be it for personal or professional reasons. As SMBs become more connected with technology and employees bring their personal devices to work, there’s a greater need to backup more data and invest in effective data protection software.

But, the biggest challenge SMBs face is the cost-benefit ratio and return on investment. A disaster and recovery solution requires capital expenditure, and, many times, SMBs don’t always have dollars available.

Child Advocates is one such organization. Based in Houston, Texas, we have all the needs for an effective/efficient disaster and recovery solution to protect our data from the mission-critical to low-impact data. However, we also must balance every dollar raised through private funding sources. We help abused children and it is important that every possible dollar go towards the care of children who are at various stages of placement during their custody with the state.

As a non-profit, Child Advocates doesn’t have large outlays of funds to build an enterprise-class backup infrastructure. We’ve been using Symantec’s Backup Exec software for many years, so when we heard that Symantec was offering a cloud-based backup solution, we decided to check it out.

Security of Data in the Cloud

As with many SMBs, data security was a very big consideration before making the decision to move our data from an on-premise solution to a third-party external solution. Child Advocates deals with a lot of sensitive data as it works with Harris County District Family Court system, Harris County District Juvenile Court system and Department of Family & Protective Services (a state agency). The organization must protect all the data that it collects including volunteer(s) personal and/or professional information, case-related data, information regarding abused children and/or their parents, medical records related to a particular case, financial data of all the funds received and donors’ information.

Data Quickly Recoverable from Cloud

In addition to dealing with highly sensitive data, as a Houston-based organization we are also located right in the middle of a hurricane zone. Disaster preparedness is a key consideration for us. It is always a challenge to have effective backups that can be recovered and restored when a hurricane-like event happens. No matter how efficient the software-based solution is, the backup data remains within Houston. Using a cloud-based backup solution gives peace of mind that data is safe and secure in the cloud within an off-site data center.

Factoring in Cost

Cloud-based backup also doesn’t require any capital expenditure, thus saving huge costs. It is scalable with our growth. In addition, there is less pressure on internal hardware resources as it frees up the storage requirements, which can be utilized for other services.

All of these factors and features make a cloud backup solution for disaster and recovery a logical choice for Child Advocates. And, Symantec Backup Exec.cloud provides all the benefits of a disaster and recovery solution with the added advantage of cloud backups.

Backup Exec.cloud has been an effective solution for Child Advocates’ technological needs when it comes to an effective backup solution that is fast, secure and optimized. The deployment is very easy and takes less than 10 minutes to install and configure the product. We don’t need to plan for new hardware or storage expansion. The agent can be installed on multiple computers (that need to be backed up) without purchasing additional licenses.

Plus, management is much simpler than using an on-premise software-based backup solution. Whenever a backup job fails, it is easy to start the job again; one can see at a glance which jobs have successfully completed and which have failed. The IT department doesn’t have to spend lot of man-hours on managing data sets, fixing the backup jobs and troubleshooting the solution.

All the hassles of a software-based solution are now becoming a thing of the past, and cloud-based backup is bringing Child Advocates into the future.